Saturday, 11 October 2008

Spread the payments or share the love?

You think it's bad seeing Christmas decorations everywhere, try being the poor benighted shop-monkey who has to price them all. I speak from my dungeon of pain (actually the sunny, warm, south-facing back office) with a price gun in my hand (also a large latte and a scotch egg). It is only October the 11th, and I am half-buried in boxes of charideeee cards and slippery bundles of giftwrap.

Yes, there is a credit crunch on, a term that always makes me think of Kit-Kats (mmmm... Kit-Kats...), and I appreciate that people find it easier to start shopping for the festive season in October, thus spreading the financial load over two or three months. However, shouldn't we be crediting the great buying public with some intelligence? The Mighty Bookstore Chain I used to work for had a phase-by-phase military-style operation that would roll out in September. Phase 1 was called "Early Gifting", a phrase that actually makes me physically ill. CDs of Christmas music were played from the start of November, and by the time the doors shut on Christmas Eve, you were ready to commit homicide if you heard "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" again. Seasoned booksellers could be reduced to a twitching wreck by the repeated whispering of "Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum....".

Christmas happens at the same time every year, and I defy you to prove otherwise (Leap Years don't count). People are unlikely to be taken aback on December the 23rd; although some of us are surprised by our own lack of preparation, it's not as if we didn't know it was going to happen. Everybody knows money is tight, and will be planning their spending accordingly. So why insult everybody by reminding them, in late September even, that they may need to start buying presents? Share the love! Stop the madness! I recommend a ban on all mention of Christmas until the second week in December. Starting, obviously, from 5 minutes after I publish this post.

23 comments:

I suspect you already know the website - I have these after last years enforced jollity http://www.santaballs.co.uk/index.php/pages/item_balls/i_hate_christmas/...... a colleague at work makes herself an advent calendar from the beginning of October, and is way up on my list of people in the line for a molten lead enema, no, her surname is not Gaveston.

Wasn't he drowned in a butt of Malmsey? Or am I just confusing them because of the word "butt"? I found the website and am getting everyone baubles this year!Just had my Perfumed Court delivery... "Sacrebleu" by Parfums de Nicolai may be my new best friend.

Mmmmm, just checked, Gaveston was killed by 2 Welshmen (what a hideous way to go)and it was his close personal friend, Edward II, who experienced "a plumber's iron, heated intensely hot, introduced through a tube into his secret private parts so that it burned the inner portions beyond the intestines", (Thank you, Sir Thomas More)I can see Perfume Court turning into a guilty pleasure...what sweetie did you get ?

Oh YUCK. I remember it now. Thanks for an image that I will struggle to rid myself of! Was I supposed to get a sweetie?? I got 6 spray testers in a cute little silver bag: 3 de Nicolai, 1 Chanel, 1 Guerlain, 1 CB I Hate Perfume. No sweetie. Maybe they already know I ate half a box of Ferrero Rocher last night. In my defence, they were a present.

Welcome! Wine and snacks will be served later. The sidebar lists are entirely due to the genius of Sei Shonagon - who probably wouldn't have stooped to admitting she had crushes! Ahhh Jackson Brodie. I hope Kate Atkinson realises how much joy she has brought to womankind!

First delivery came with a "might be coffee" flavoured sucky sweet and the second with a "turn your mouth inside out" lemon one. Now that was in spite of me having eaten a family bag of Minstrels (well, I am a member of a family being my defence) so they can't see everything!

The worst people are the ones that do all their Christmas shopping in the January sales of the preceeding one. Oh great. You got me a CD which is 12 months old and which I bought for myself 11 months ago... As for spreading the cost over 3 months... does that ever work? I'm sure the earlier you start the more you end up spending. Having said that I must admit to having carried a small but controlled on-line early gifting spree. At least when you shop online you don't have to listen to Simply Having A Wonderful Christmas Time...

TR - Nope, no sweets! Only got half the order though so I might get a sweet with the rest.Made too much pie for dinner party the other night so eating my way through that at the moment...

RB - During the Xmas season, when drinking all day, I try to start off with a beer, which seems to line the stomach admirably especially when taken with a few ibuprofen and a cigarette. Or, in case of emergency, a Bloody Mary, which not only makes you feel like you're getting some vitamins down you, but will now make me think of Lord of the Rings.

MM - I was a pixie too! A seconder no less. I may start looking out for elf jobs if the belt needs tightening, but to be honest with you, I'm hardly Galadriel. Maybe a job as an orc would be better...

Steve - my aunt has a frankly vile crystal carriage clock she and her friends give each other in rotation every year - I think this year her friend Nicky's due to get it, and then has to work out who to give it to next year...

I admit to buying the occasional present throughout the year, if I happen on the perfect thing. The snag is that I usually end up with half a dozen for the same person, then forget (a) that I've bought them or (b) where I've put them, so that they turn up months or years later when their relevance has faded.

I have a drawer full of emergency presents. They're so last-resort that nobody ever gets given them. in fact, I should just say that I have a drawer full of soap and tea-lights that need throwing away...

I worked in a card shop at the age of 18 Lucy - your posting brings it all back. And on 1st September all the Xmas stuff came out and had to be priced (apparently this had been the date to get it out for years and years, yet our customers always moaned that our shop got earlier every year!)

And you'd be amazed how much we shifted in September - a lot of anxious old ladies wanted the cheapest cards with the best designs & that's when we put them out unless we were selling half-price AFTER Christmas. This was in the days when there was no pre-New Year sales that is.

Oh Laura the joys of retail. You can't do right for doing wrong, can you? If we put them out now we'd get the "Too early" moans, if we leave it till later we get the "Haven't you got any advent calendars YET" moans. I will admit I've already put aside a bunch of cards and gift wrap so that when I eventually have the pre-Xmas panic I won't be stuck with the crappy stuff. But you never heard me say that.

I work in a GP surgery, we are already reminding people to request their meds in time for Christmas - resulting in a major upsurge of my own medications needless to say - Prozac profiteroles anyone ? Apropos present drawers.... oh the shame, tea lights - check, soap - check, and what about the old stand by "notelets" (I shudder at the word)? and why is it there is never anything right for the recipient in the drawer ?, you go and find two alternative presents, one of which goes in the drawer and, immediately, becomes grotesque? Or is that just me ?Sorry if this is an exercise in convolutions ? but today warranted a hefty Ricard

I *hate* "Christmas Creep" - and it's already starting! I feel like holing up in my house and not coming out until January - I might do it if I had enough food and drink (strong drink at that) laid in. It's not even Halloween yet and I am already getting cranky....

Today (13th May 2016) I am mostly:

wondering if I can get to Tesco's and back for a sandwich without missing the afternoon book delivery (what are the odds)

reading "Archie" (the reboot of the 60s comic) by Mark Waid (Daredevil) and Fiona Staples (Saga). I was never, I should add in self-defence, an Archie fan, but the idea of it being all Sunnydaled up is intriguing. If you're a nerd.

wearing "Lys Mediterranee" by Frederic Malle. It's like I've beaten you to death with a bunch of lilies, and you liked it.

unable to stop singing "Cielito Lindo" (aka "the AI YI YI YIII song"), thanks to a violin-playing busker who has been playing variants of it outside for the last 4 hours.

About Me

A veritable dustbin of sparkly factoids. Don't let the fact that I smoke Gauloises put you off. It's a habit, not an indication of moral turpitude. I like anything in a martini glass too.
I used to say I hated politics, sport and reality TV. Then the Olympics happened. Now I just hate politics and reality TV.
My favourite quote is "Why must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough to love you knowing nothing?" (Lloyd Cole, for you Google searchers). Optimist by nature, pessimist by experience. Oh, and I'm a ginger.

Strange and oddly unrelated Google searches by which people have found my blog...

"pork pie sexual encounters"

"its hard to say words that is not final because many things happen in between"

"Fodens reliable ant"

"my wife say to ex i love you and to me say i love you"

"Frankie Boyle 2p sausage"

"crayon book pictures channelled whelk"

and a special apology to anyone who came here following the promise "Lucy has one of the hottest racks on the planet", IT'S NOT ME. THAT'S A WHOLE OTHER WEBSITE. Although my rack is epic in its own smalltown way.

Perfumes I may bankrupt myself buying one day.

He's one of us!!

Now I love him even more. If it turns out he also likes calvados, Nabokov and the TV works of Aaron Sorkin (what are the odds?) I will in fact lay down my life for him.

Role models I channel when necessary

Miss Prothero in "A Child's Christmas In Wales" by Dylan Thomas : "She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?" "

My mother the librarian, who can express displeasure with a very slight widening of the eyes. Invaluable for dealing with the general public.

My late paternal grandmother, a woman who consumed nothing but untipped Senior Service and gin 'n' sherry (aka "alkie's delight") and once drove down a 1:3 hairpin bend in her Reliant Robin with both hands in the air cackling "Of course, I'm COMPLETELY pissed".

Eleanor of Aquitaine - brought literature and table manners to Britain. And a fellow ginger.

Miss Jones from "Rising Damp". ...."Oh, Mr Rigsby, the music's gone to my head like wine!!!"

Lady Colin Campbell

Gertrude Elizabeth Blood, 1857 - 1911. I go and say hello to Gertie Lady C every time I'm near the National Portrait Gallery. The perspective is all wrong, but she's just daring you to have a go. A raised eyebrow says more than a thousand sarcastic put-downs.

Sei Shonagon (c.966 - 1017)

...also a big fan of pointless lists of things, although I have never reached the giddy heights of "Things that look a bit pathetic".

Esteemed Colleagues

Booksellers Anonymous

"Well, to be honest, after years of smoking and drinking, you do sometimes look at yourself and think...You know, just sometimes, in between the first cigarette with coffee in the morning to that four hundredth glass of cornershop piss at 3am, you do sometimes look at yourself and think...this is fantastic. I'm in heaven." - Bernard from Black Books

Fictional men I have had a crush on (in chronological order)

Asterix. I wrote a proposal of marriage, to me, from him, in yellow crayon and presented it to my mother. I was 4 at the time.

Snufkin.

Prince Gwydion of the Sons of Don.

Ged, aka Sparrowhawk, the Wizard of Earthsea (well, one of them).

Tintin. What can I say? I was 6.

Mr Knightley from "Emma". So much more appealing than the rebarbative and snotty Mr Darcy. Always marry your best friend.

Brat Farrar.

Steve Carella of the 87th Precinct.

Tom Ripley, eponymous hero of the Patricia Highsmith series. Not sure if I love him or secretly want to be him (how liberating would it be to just murder some complete stranger on a train because their clothes annoy you a bit?) Envy his cute french wife though.

Amit Chatterji. Honestly, how was he not the most suitable boy?????????

John Constantine, the old Hellblazer himself. Well, it'd be rude not to. He's hot! He's scruffy! He's British! He's a warlock! And he smokes! Although the fact that he seems only to smoke Silk Cut makes him oddly wussy.

Charlie Parker - not the jazz musician, the private eye from "Every Dead Thing" et al. Traumatised. Psychic. Mind you the fact that I have a crush on John Connolly, the author, may have a bearing on this.

Berry Rydell from "Virtual Light". Endearingly shambolic.

King Mob from "The Invisibles". Buff, bald, a trained assassin, and an inveterate quoter of The Kinks.

Dexter Morgan, unapologetic (nay, gleeful) serial killer from "Darkly Dreaming Dexter". The TV series got him wrong, even if it was great viewing. Should have been Brendan Fraser.

"Angel" by Thierry Mugler. Vile. Smells of the cat-hair-covered toffee you find down the back of the sofa. Also of ageing and desperate cabin crew.

The "Toast" catalogue. Smells of linseed oil and old haddock. WHY??? What are they printing it on? Or with???

Wet Barbour jackets, and don't kid yourself otherwise, Tarquin.

Things people do that make me want to slap them.

Shout "I can't believe you're doing this to me" at a traffic warden who is, usually deservedly, giving them a ticket. Believe it, love, the evidence is right before you.

Preface a question with "Question!"

Get grumpy about "too much choice" in bookshops etc. What the hell does "too much choice" mean??? I've started saying cheerfully "Absolutely! Bring in a totalitarian Communist state and you'll just have one book which you'll HAVE to read!"

Sulk. Irritating in a small child, positively BACKWARD in anyone over 15.

Use phrases like "it's not in my skill set" when they mean "I'm too idle/self-important to learn". Lucinda Ledgerwood, come on dowwwwwn!!